Telehealth
The broad delivery of health-related services and information through telecommunications technology, including clinical care, education, and remote monitoring. Coverage and billing rules vary by payer and modality, making accurate coding and place-of-service capture important for reimbursement.
What is telehealth?
Telehealth is the broad delivery of health-related services and information using telecommunications technology. It encompasses clinical care delivered remotely as well as non-clinical activities such as provider education, administrative meetings, remote patient monitoring, and patient self-management support.
Telehealth is an umbrella term wider than telemedicine, which refers more specifically to remote clinical care. It can be delivered through live video, audio-only calls, secure messaging, or devices that transmit health data from home.
What role does telehealth play in the revenue cycle?
Coverage, eligible services, and payment rules for telehealth vary widely by payer, modality, and patient location, so reimbursement is sensitive to how an encounter is documented and coded. Capturing the correct place of service, modifiers, and visit type is essential to getting telehealth claims paid.
Because the rules change frequently, revenue-cycle teams must stay current to avoid denials and compliance problems. Surgical practices may use telehealth for pre-operative consultations and post-operative follow-up, each of which must be billed according to the applicable policy.
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